


Tale As Old As Time

by coplins



Series: Packrunners [47]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bonding, Fear, Knotting, M/M, NO NON-CON! read authors note, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Public Claiming, Public Sex, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rough Sex, Stalking, Suspense, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-20 17:57:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21060824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coplins/pseuds/coplins
Summary: Back when he was a kit, Dick used to get an itchy feeling when he was followed. Through all his years living in comfort, he never grew complacent, never let his guard down. Now the itch is back and he's starting to get nervous...





	Tale As Old As Time

**Author's Note:**

> There's a rather brutal sex scene in this that possibly has the potential to be triggering to someone who has experienced violent sexual assault. There is, however, no actual rape/non-con. If either participant had been unwilling they would have skunked making it impossible to go on. The consent, despite not being verbalised with spoken words, is enthusiastic.

* * *

A leopard can’t change its spots. Dick feels the itch between his shoulders and throws a look behind him. He sees nothing suspicious. It doesn't matter. It might be decades since he left the slums but he still trusts the itch that tells him he's being followed.

The wind is in his face and he's certain his stalker is behind him. He curses his scent. Back in the days he could just duck into an alley and disappear. Now he's as easily tracked as anyone else.

He keeps scenting and watching the streets through the reflection in the store windows but sees no one that stands out amongst the morning pedestrians, no cars acting out of place. Nobody loitering while trying to look inconspicuous.

At one point he thinks he sees someone duck behind a corner, someone dressed in the same drab beige and greys of the surrounding buildings. Heart thumping, he turns on his heel and hurries over to confront his stalker, claws extending from the tips of his loosely fisted fingers.

Nothing.

Not even a scent trail to confirm what he thinks he saw.

By the time he gets to work his pulse is still racing. He isn't afraid, but he's not at ease. It takes him a while to relax.

At lunch he goes out with Raff and two other colleagues. The itch comes back. This time he catches nothing amiss. Still, he's certain he's being watched. He doesn't mention it to his companions, but keeps up his discreet vigilance, eyes wandering to look out the restaurant windows every so often. A black car polished to a high sheen passes by outside. In the shiny paint, Dick sees the reflection of a man clad in beige and greys. He can’t see the man’s full body, he can’t make out a face. The man’s standing beside one of the restaurant windows just out of sight from anyone inside. Then the car passes, and with it the warped reflection. Dick’s pulse jumps nervously.

“Are you alright?” one of his colleagues asks in concern. 

Dick curses the scent giving away his sudden nerves. “Oh, it’s nothing. I suddenly just remembered lighting a candle in the kitchen this morning, but I can’t remember if I put it out,” he lies.

“Gabe’s flight doesn’t leave for several hours. I’ll send him a text asking him to check,” Raff assures him and takes up his phone. A minute later his phone beeps. “Gabe says not to worry.”

Dick lays his hand on Raff’s thigh and thanks him with a coy smile. The next minute his own phone beeps with an incoming text. 

`Gabe: Yo Dicky-chan! You gone loopy? I’m not noseblind. No candle’s been lit here for days. Is this a secret code? Are you in trouble? Are you having memory problems? Or are you setting up a prank? If that’s the case i want in! ;)`

Dick smiles at his phone and taps out another brief lie to explain the first, saying he was nervous about an upcoming meeting and told his companions about the candle so he wouldn’t have to confess to his nerves. Gabe sends him a thumbs up.

Dick doesn’t see the mysterious man on his way back from the restaurant, but his skin still crawls, touched by the imagined gaze of an unseen onlooker. Thoughts of his stalker keep him preeoccupied all afternoon.

In case the stalker knows his habits, he leaves work two hours earlier than usual. He even takes the added precaution of changing into comfortable, sturdy clothes and military style boots while hiding a knife in one boot and tucking another into his pocket. He’s always kept a practical change of clothes in his office. A leopard can’t change its spots, and a suspicious slum kit is always a suspicious slum kit.

He leaves through the garage despite coming on foot, and heads the opposite direction of home. His face is shadowed by the hood of his jacket, and he completes the disguise by adopting his old slum-swagger instead of his now familiar graceful glide.

A few minutes later he feels it again. This time the itch brings a thrill of fear. If his stalker has found him again, in spite of all the effort he’s taken to escape, then it's someone who knows what they're doing.

He considers where would be the most dangerous location to be jumped and where he might have an advantage. He can’t go home. He doesn't want to bring an unknown danger to the doorstep of the people he loves. He needs to shake his tail.

He passes a bus stop just as the bus starts closing its doors. On impulse, he gets on it. He pays and sits in the middle, watching the cabs behind the bus. He gets off randomly five stops later and jogs across the street to catch another bus. Ten stops on this one before he gets off and runs, zigzagging between streets and around blocks, shoving people out of the way if they aren’t fast enough to avoid him. He slows to a walk, discreetly casting a look behind him every so often. A few blocks later he sees a flash of beige disappear behind a corner as he turns his head.

His heart races.

_Fuck!_

This is not a good place to confront his stalker. If he turns the same corner he’ll be out of sight from any witnesses. Not that he thinks anyone would help, but the Williamses would pay for statements that would lead to the location of his attacker, and people around here don’t want hordes of cops combing the area which is what would happen if a pack member is murdered. And Dick has no doubt his packmates would commit murder to avenge any attack against him. 

Not that it protects him now or his current stalker wouldn’t have the audacity (or the balls) to be following him in the first place.

He takes off running towards the safest, most dangerous place he knows. A place he knows as intimately as the heart beating in his chest.

Twice he slows down and twice he gets a fleeting glimpse of beige.

He's afraid now, heart pumping furiously. All he can focus on is the hope of safety waiting among the old buildings of his former home.

He's tired when he finally reaches the outskirts of the slums. He turns into a narrow dead end alley and aims for its end. Once there, he jumps up and pushes off the wall, next step on the adjoining wall, pushing off to reach the opposite wall, pushing off again, jumping back and forth all the way to the roof where he catches the edge and swings himself up. He's panting, legs burning with exertion. He rolls around to peek over the edge in time to see his pursuer's back disappear out from the mouth of the alleyway. He jerks away, gets to his feet and takes off running again with a sense of dread. He jumps from one building to another, runs across it and jumps to the next. Up here, only someone with an excellent sense of smell could get a whiff of him from the ground. He's beginning to feel safe. A few more houses and he can climb through a hole in the wall and play a game of hide and seek, hoping his pursuer doesn’t know all the nooks and crannies, abandoned houses and dusty attics as well as he does. Without a scent he’d be invisible, damnit. 

He's exhausted. He shouldn't have run all the way here, but fear keeps him going.

He isn't prepared for the sheer terror freezing him like a deer in the headlights at the sight of a large man heaving himself over the edge of the roof right into his path. The man's dressed in inconspicuous beiges and greys, perfect city camouflage topped off with a matching army cap. Worst of all, he has no scent. Dick keeps his hands loosely fisted to hide his claws and takes his knife―a stiletto switchblade―out of his pocket, preparing to fight. 

Dick’s terror is traded for a jolt of surprise when the man angles his face up, no longer hidden by the cap. The man’s flared eyes shine like beacons, sharp fangs gleaming when he smirks with the hungry confidence of a lion that has cornered a gazelle. His chest is heaving, but he looks more excited than tired. Dick knows this man doesn’t do anything in half measures.

"Impressive," Dick states and pockets his knife, trying to catch his breath.

"Run, little O, _run_," Marlon answers, smirk widening.

The thrill in the pit of Dick’s belly isn’t fear this time but titillation. Marlon’s been stalking him all day, using scent blockers and stealth to get Dick to Run. This competition far exceeds the Omega Run at college. This is a feral and base version of the ancient game, playing out in a modern cityscape.

Dick takes a few deep breaths then takes off running towards the edge of the roof, leaping over to the next building. This time Marlon’s in hot pursuit. The chase goes over rooftops, down walls, into buildings, through chimney chutes and attics. They slide down steep rooftops, run over flat ones. Dick’s starting to smell Marlon. The blockers are wearing off and he’s had no time to reapply them. Several times Dick manages to shake the Patriarch, like when he drops from one roof to grab the ledge of an open window two stories below and swing himself inside. Marlon simply can’t duplicate the gymnastics of it, nor can he use two walls close together to run himself up the side of a building, but he finds ways. He’s on Dick’s tail like a Bluetick coon hound. Dick’s nearing total exhaustion but he’s elated. _This_ is how you do an Omega Run! 

Dick hasn’t seen or smelled Marlon for several minutes when he jumps from one building down towards a lower one. He’s starting to think he managed to shake him once and for all. But mid jump someone suddenly grabs his ankle and jerks. Dick misses his landing, fingers brushing the wall then he’s plummeting flailing helplessly, fear shooting like a spear through his body.

Time stands still as he falls.

_This is how I die._

In the next heartbeat his fall is cut short with another jerk. He has just enough time to curl away protecting his head before he slams back-first into the wall, wind knocked out of him.

He’s not falling to his death. 

He’s dangling high above the street, getting pulled _upward_.

Dazedly, he blinks in confusion, trying to puzzle together what happened.

There’s an open window in the building he jumped from. Marlon must have jumped out of it while Dick jumped from above. That’s how Marlon managed to get the vice grip on his ankle mid-jump. Marlon’s currently climbing up a reinforced drainpipe, dragging Dick with him. If Dick had jumped a couple of feet to the left or right of the drainpipe, this would never have worked.

Dick’s still dazed when Marlon reaches the rooftop and pulls him onto it, Dick’s side scrapes painfully against the edge when he’s pulled over, every breath painful as he sucks in air after having the wind knocked out of him. He’s paralyzed with fear from his near-death experience, and can do nothing but let himself be manhandled to safety. Marlon lies down on top of him and grabs one of his wrists, deep-purring with a feral grin, fangs fully dropped. Dick does a double take when he sees a second set of fangs in Marlon’s lower jaw, just like Sam and Gabe have. Dick’s seen Marlon drop fangs many times by now, but it’s always only the common upper fangs - more evidence of the control Marlon exerts in everything he does, another secret kept. At some point during the chase Marlon’s lost his military cap. His cheekbone is bruised and scraped, and there’s a gash in his sleeve coloured red at the edges. He smells of fatigue, joy, arousal, and the faint metallic tang of blood. His glands leak profusely. He's dirty, and his hair’s a mess.

Suddenly, Dick finds himself grinning, slashing at Marlon’s face with his free hand, biting his shoulder as hard as he can, struggling to get free. Marlon hisses in pain and loses his grip on Dick's wrist. Dick knees him in the kidney, punches him on the already damaged cheekbone, and then he's free, struggling onto his feet, stumbling away with the intention of running some more.

Exhaustion and the corrosive burn of lactic acid get the better of him. He's less than ten feet away when Marlon tackles him. Dick lands on his belly with Marlon on top, locking him down. This time he surrenders, lets Marlon collect his wrists in one hand and pin them to the roof. He lies still, panting, watching from the corner of his eye how Marlon rubs the fingers of his free hand over his own neck to coat them with secretion. Marlon's grin is feral when he puts his fingers to Dick's mouth and forces them past his lips. Not that Dick's resisting. It's still something of a shock when the fingers press a point at the back of his throat and his body starts siphoning with no conscious decision of his own.

Supposedly, forcing someone to siphon is a vast infringement of the person's boundaries. But for someone like Dick it's something else. He'd spent his life begging, cheating, bartering to be allowed to siphon, only to be denied it, even by his first mate.

Marlon's fingers are dirty. Dick can pick up several smells that hint at the route he took when he couldn't follow Dick directly―dust, mould, rusty metal, old wood and paint. He can even smell a little bit of blood from a stranger on the fingers. Marlon himself is in prime health, but as fatigued as Dick, full of aches and pains that you can only smell while siphoning since Marlon’s elated joy and arousal overshadow everything else. There is no hint of any long-term anxiety or other mental discomfort.

Marlon sucks and licks on Dick’s neck, his deep-purr reverberating through both their bodies. He siphons Dick, then coats his fingers with his own secretion again to feed it to the Omega trapped beneath him. Dick opens his mouth willingly to suck the digits into his mouth, whining in protest when Marlon pulls them out a few seconds later. This time when Dick siphons, the high hits him like a sledgehammer. Gone are all the distracting nuances of higher emotions, health and superficial contamination. He can’t even determine the difference between Marlon’s scent and his own. Instead the drowsy, fuzzy, floating state of mind makes his body lax and his pain feel distant. The folded edges of the metal plate roofing are digging into Dick’s chest, belly, and thighs, but the discomfort just a note in the margin of his awareness.

Marlon purrs his approval. “That’s it, pet,” he praises, as he licks Dick’s neck and siphons again. Then Dick hears the meaty crack of jaws shifting. Blunted fangs dig in on both sides of his neck, hard enough to hurt and force Dick to keep still while Marlon paws his ass and growls discontentedly at him for not wearing Omega pants. Marlon lets up his bite to yank Dick’s pants halfway down his thighs, then uses his free hand to fumble with something. Dick closes his eyes. The slight breeze chills his bare skin where it’s wet from sweat and slick, soothing his overexerted body. In contrast, the metal roofing under him is warm from catching sun all day. He hears the sound of a zipper and tearing plastic. There’s a wafting scent of latex before he feels the warm press of Marlon’s erection between his asscheeks, the touch burning in fever-hot contrast to the chilly breeze. Marlon’s dick slips down between his legs along the perineum with Marlon’s first two thrusts. The Alpha growls in irritation, and uses his hand to guide the cock home, pushing in with a hard, jolting thrust that has Dick arching his back from the shock of it. He’s promptly pushed down again, his neck captured between those impressive fangs to keep him in place as Marlon starts grinding.

The funny thing about a siphon high is that while it leaves you disconnected from your body, cocooned, fuzzy and content, your brain continues to sort the surrounding world into ‘bonding experience’, ‘irrelevant’ or ‘immediate threat’. It means, that while Dick’s aware of all his discomforts and his surroundings, his mind disregards them in favour of enjoying blissful lethargy. But when a voice addresses them, he instantly turns his head in the direction of the voice to growl threateningly.

“Hey! These roofs are―”

Marlon lets up his bite with the meaty crack of a shift and interrupts the speaker. “Hale territory. We’re well aware. But you know the rules,” he says with an apologetic but friendly smile. “You have to claim them where you catch them or you’ll have to chase them all over again. Don’t worry, we’ll be out of your hair in 30 minutes when the bond’s cemented and my knot’s died down.”

The speaker is a young, roguish Alpha standing on the roof of one of the opposing buildings. He scents in their direction, then makes a facial shrug. “Take your time. I saw you chasing him and thought you were about to rob him.”

“Wouldn’t dream of hunting in Hale territory without your blessing.”

The guy gives them a thumbs up. “Then knock yourself out,” he says and winks.

Marlon rumbles his appreciation and turns his attention back to Dick. He holds Dick down, wrists still locked in a vice grip pinned to the roof above his head, and sucks on Dick's neck-gland while he starts slamming into the Omega’s channel hard enough to almost knock the wind out of Dick. Again.

Dick keens high-pitched pleasure-pain, his clawed fingers curling to scrape the metal plating of the roof, creating an awful screeching.

Marlon's knot starts to swell, catching on the rim and preventing him from continuing the brutal thrusts. Instead, he grinds until he's stuck, roaring and convulsing as he orgasms. He lets go of Dick's wrists and holds himself up on trembling arms, panting, sweat dripping from his face onto Dick's neck, tickling a track down onto the roof below. He holds the position for several seconds, then wraps an arm around Dick, tipping them over to lie on their sides. Dick's lax and hazy, steadily purring his appreciation.

He can smell weed.

The Hale watchdog on the other roof sits dangling his legs over the edge smoking a joint while alternately enjoying the show and scanning the streets below.

Marlon grabs Dick's hair to twist his face back around, and leans over him to force his tongue into Dick's mouth for an inelegant kiss. His chin is coated with secretion from sucking on Dick's neck gland.

It's perfect.

Marlon reaches down to stroke Dick's abused erection, licking Dick's neck and siphoning while he brings Dick to orgasm. Then Marlon moves his hand to his mouth to lick up the semen and siphon it too.

In the distance they can hear a primal call, asking for a status update. The Hale thug lifts his head to respond with an all-is-well. His call is echoed from several directions as other sentries rapport in. Sounds from Dick's kithood that once brought apprehension, but now are comforting in a nostalgic sense.

Marlon's second orgasm is heralded by twitching and a whimper. Dick raises his hand to drag along Marlon's throat, then he puts his fingers in his mouth to siphon his Patriarch.

Perfect, in every sense of the word.

He'll be picking this encounter apart during his next therapy session. Why did he enjoy this brutal claiming so much? When Peter claimed him, he felt resentment. He’d been equally upset the first time Mike marked him up. But perhaps there was more at work under the surface? He's always liked the pain-pleasure of rough sex. Technically, he should be horrified by what happened today. But that wouldn’t be fair to the Patriarch. Marlon's spent months getting to know him, flirting, needling him for details on what he likes, teasing him and talking with him. This didn't come out of the blue or on a sadistic whim. Dick clearly remembers standing in the Williams’ gym discussing the Omega Run with Marlon, and the Patriarch responding with the promise of a run of their own, the ultimate run followed by an old school claiming very much like what just happened. Marlon was certainly presumptuous to spring this on him without warning or confirmation, but he’d promised Dick even then that the game would stop if Dick said “no”. In the time since that promise, Dick’s come to trust Marlon and has no fear that the Patriarch wouldn’t keep his word. Which is why not even the thought of refusing this entered his mind. 

"What are you thinking about, pet?" Marlon asks and nuzzles him.

"It strikes me that this is how you loved Laurent," Dick answers. Marlon chirps in startled amusement at the unexpected claim. Dick goes on. "You told us you and Laurent would chase each other over rooftops and building sites, that you learned to carry each other's weight, and that you'd make love in the most precarious locations."

"That's right, sweetheart,” Marlon purrs. “So thank you for letting me relive some of the best times of my youth."

Dick smiles drowsily. "I was certain I was falling to my death when you caught me."

"If I wasn't sure I could make the jump while holding you, I wouldn't have tried."

"You used scent blockers to hide yourself."

Marlon rumbles with dark amusement, lopsided smirk curling his lips. "What can I say, pet? You're not a cheap lay."

A laugh of unadulterated joy bubbles up inside of Dick. "I should think not," he grins.

Marlon purrs and presses his face to Dick's throat. Dick can feel Marlon's smile against his skin. "How do you feel?"

"High. Exhausted. In pain. Fantastic. How come you're not siphon high?"

"Sweetheart, I'm soaring. But I’ll be damned if I let my guard down in this part of the city. Wait," Marlon bids him―as if he wasn't knotted firmly in place―and digs into one of his pockets. He takes up two packets akin to those you get ketchup in at fast food restaurants. He opens one and holds it to Dick's mouth. It’s honey. Dick suckles the overly sweet substance out of the plastic. He doesn’t care for the undiluted taste of honey, but knows adrenaline has burned through his blood sugar like a bushfire. When he’s finished the honey Marlon opens the other packet to ingest it himself. Dick appreciates the not-so-small meaning behind the simple gesture, that the Patriarch waits to see to his own needs until Dick has been cared for.

They lie spooned in silence while they wait for Marlon’s knot to go down, Marlon holding him, using his other arm as a pillow for Dick. Occasionally he will nuzzle Dick or place a kiss on Dick’s cheek, temple, or shoulder.

The Hale sentry on the other roof doesn’t leave his post but does get up to patrol it, spying on the streets below in every direction before returning to his perch to watch them and the rooftops beyond. The breeze carries his scent to Dick and Marlon. The young Alpha smells content and a bit aroused. It hits Dick then, that the Hale isn’t guarding against them, he’s guarding _them_, as in, ready to give them a heads up if trouble comes their way. The thought is as absurd as it is astonishing. “He’s guarding us,” Dick says in quiet wonder.

“That’s right, precious,” Marlon murmurs equally quietly with a warm smile. “Sometimes all it takes is a split second to decide who you want on your territory, but once you’ve accepted them then they automatically fall under your protection. That’s why I made sure to greet him in a friendly manner.”

“But he’s a Hale?” Dick’s mind won’t quite wrap around how the Big Bad Boogeyman of his kithood is actually protecting him without even knowing who he is.

“The closest thing the slum has to a police force, unless you are prey,” Marlon states in contentment.

It’s a strange way to look at one of the biggest dangers from Dick’s kithood, but he supposes that it’s true in a convoluted fashion. They are the ones other criminals fear. And the regular police force is as corrupt as the Hales.

When Marlon’s knot finally dies down Dick flips onto his back to peer up at Marlon. He can smell himself, how his pack bond has altered. He’d felt the compulsion to be with Marlon, but thought his bond was cemented already since he’d slept with both Marlon and Dean on multiple occasions. Now he smells that slight altering that tells him it wasn’t, but it is now. Mutual siphoning is what made it final. The same feedback loop that once gave him his scent now sealed him to his new family. “Take care of me, Marlon. I’ve earned it,” he says. And his eyes say so much more.

“I’d like nothing more.” It’s a promise. Marlon helps pull his pants up and helps him to stand up after he put away his penis and zipped up. Then Marlon turns to their watcher on the other roof. “Hey, thanks for guarding us,” he calls with a friendly wave.

“No problem, man. Most romantic shit I’ve seen in weeks. Take care of yourselves now,” he calls back.

“You, too.”

Dick’s limbs feel like jelly. His body is bruised and aching, still numbed by the abating siphon high. He’s trembling in the aftermath of exertion and the waning adrenaline that has been pumping through his veins all day. When he climbs down the drainpipe, Marlon climbs with him, one arm around Dick like a safety belt. Down on the street he shamelessly lifts Dick up to carry him against his chest with one arm behind Dick’s back and the other in the fold of his knees. Dick laughs and calls him a show-off but enjoys it nonetheless. Hailing a cab in this area is hard, especially when you’re battered and dirty like they are, but Marlon puts Dick down and presses a $100 bill against the windshield of a cab before it can drive off. Marlon holds him and purrs soothingly all the way home where they take a bath together, and Marlon cares for his injuries, feeds him, and carries him up the stairs to his rooms. They make love then, slow, gentle and sensuous, the antithesis of their tryst on the roof. Marlon stays with him that night. 

Despite how unsettling the day had started, and how scared he’d been before he’d identified his stalker, he’s never felt as safe as he does now.

Dick’s still purring when he falls asleep.

* * *


End file.
